Facebook – Increasing Privacy with Friend Lists
Are you tired of chat messages from all you friends whenever you logon to Facebook? And who can see your pictures/photos, status and other privat information? Then this tutorial is for you.
In this tutorial you will learn how to increase your privacy using friends lists. Friend Lists can specifically be used to take control of who you can see in the News Feed and Chat. Friends Lists can also be used to take control of what others can see about you. This will enable you to control which friends can see what about you.
This Tutorial will provide you with examples on how to create the Friend Lists.
The list we will be creating
- The ‘Family‘ friend list – this list is for the people that should be able to see everything.
I also suggest that you create the following
- The ‘Limited Profile‘ friend list – this is the list for people that should only be allowed to see a limited amount of your doings on Facebook.
Good luck =)
Explanation
What is Friend Lists, and what are they useful for? A Friend List is a way of managing your facebook friends into categories. A Friend List is very useful when you want to control of what your facebook friends should be able to see about you.
Instead of having settings for each Facebook friend, you can have settings for different Friend Lists, and then place your Facebook friends in the category where you feel they belong. This will become much easier to understand later in the tutorial.
Creating a Friend List
In this first step we are going to create a list for our family and friends we regard as family. Follow these steps to create your first Facebook list.
- Start from your Facebook start page
- In the blue bar (the one in the top of the page) press the ‘Friends’ link
- Press ‘Create New List’
- Enter the name of the list: Family
- I would name the list in a way that reminds me of what it is used for. - Select the people you want on the list.
Congratulations you have now successfully created a Friend List called Family. Repeat this step as many times as you need lists. I personally have 10 lists or more.
Now we will be moving on to the privacy settings. This is where the lists will come in very handy.
Privacy settings using lists
In the blue bar in the top of your facebook page, navigate to Settings -> Privacy Settings.
On the Privacy Settings page you have the following options:
We will concentrate on the first of following two options, though both of these are important to remember in your privacy settings.
- Profile Information
- Contact Information
Click on the Profile Information and continue to the next step.
Profile Information
Here you will see the following 12 options
- About me
- Personal Info
- Birthday
- Religious and Political Views
- Family and Relationship
- Education and Work
- Photos and Videos of Me
- Photo Albums
- Posts by Me
- Allow friends to post on my Wall
- Post by Friends
- Comment on Posts
We will only be going through one of the options, because they all work similarly. So all you need to do is repeat the following step, in the option you want to have specific privacy settings for.
Example using the option Photos and Videos of Me
In this option, you will be able to limit who will be able to see pictures and photos of you. This is a very important option to use, as a lot of employers are beginning to use Facebook to search for employees before they hire. With this option you will be able to limit the number of people seeing your pictures to specific friends.
First, press the gray box with the locket where it says Everyone. (In the right side of the of the window, on the same line as Photos and Videos of Me). Hereafter, press Customize, as shown on the following picture.
This brings up the Custom Privacy window.In this window you will be able to change who will be allowed to see your pictures, and who will be denied the access to your pictures. This is possible through the two options: Make this visible to and Hide this from.
If you want to be more specific about who can see your pictures. Choose the option Specific people…, from the drop-down-box. (In the first part: Make this visible to). This enable you to type in friends, or lists of people who should have access to your pictures.
In the second part of the Custom Privacy window, you have the option Hide this from. In this input box, you type in the names or lists of people that you want to deny access to your pictures.
In my example. I have created a list called ‘Limited Profil’. This is a list that I use for all the people who should not have access to my various information.
If you want to change your other privacy setting you just have to repeat the above steps similarly to what you have just stepped through.
This concludes how to setup Privacy Settings on Facebook. If you have any questions or comments then do not hesitate to write in the comment box below.
Using the Friend Lists with News Feed and Chat
When you have created Friends lists, you will be able to use these in your News Feed and in the Chat. In the News feed, you can select the list depending on which news you want to read. In the chat you will be able to select who can see your online status. Especially the latter mentioned possibility is a really nice feature.